Briefly Noted

Avenue of Mysteries, by John Irving (Simon & Schuster). In Irving’s fourteenth novel, Juan Diego Guerrero, an acclaimed middle-aged writer, takes a trip to the Philippines to honor a promise he made as a child. Guerrero is famous enough to attract a band of well-meaning fans and caretakers throughout his muddled trek; his main difficulty is remembering his medication. The most vivid passages are dreamlike flashbacks to his adolescence in Mexico, as a dump-picker scavenging for books and, later, as part of a ragtag circus. In both time lines, Irving’s characters grapple with faith and with the Catholic Church. Guerrero’s sister Lupe asserts, “We are the miracle—you and me. Not them. Just us.”

The Secret Chord, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking). This retelling of the story of the Biblical David, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, follows his rise to power through the eyes of Natan, a seer and royal adviser, who is compiling an account of the King’s life. The picture that emerges is dramatic—midrash meets “Game of Thrones”—and often salacious. (The young David’s relationship with Yonatan, Shaul’s son, is described in sexually explicit terms.) Brooks also misses no opportunity to darken our view of the King of Israel, recasting the infatuation with Batsheva as a matter of rape rather than of seduction. She renders David’s character with complexity and shows how his flaws and his hard-heartedness nonetheless make him a terrifyingly effective ruler.

Lady Byron and Her Daughters, by Julia Markus (Norton). Although mad, bad Byron remains a rich vein for biographers, the subject of this book is not the poet but his wife, Annabella. Attacked by Byron and demonized by generations of his admirers as “a virtuous monster,” Annabella emerges here as a kind, intelligent, and forceful presence who deftly maneuvered her way out of an abusive marriage. She brought up one daughter (the genius mathematician Ada), adopted another (Medora, fathered by Byron with his sister), and founded the first “infant” school in England. If the poet’s star sinks as Annabella’s rises, Markus’s account establishes that the reappraisal is long overdue.

Quixote, by Ilan Stavans (Norton). This year marks the four-hundredth anniversary of the second and final volume of Cervantes’s epochal work, “Don Quixote.” In this wide-ranging appreciation, Stavans, a scholar of Latin-American literature, assesses the enduring appeal of a book that has influenced such disparate writers as Dostoyevsky and Mark Twain, as well as non-writers, including George Washington. Stavans examines his own reactions: he admits to early frustrations with the work, but extolls its value as a compendium of fictional technique. Despite the book’s unassailable status today, it was not well appreciated in Cervantes’s era, thanks to its nonsensical structure, rambling diction, and multiple exclamations. Stavans points out that these are precisely the features that have made it a handbook for wayward thinkers ever since.